Once again, Obama shows his true colors. Even richer is the purported reason for the boot. Supposedly, videographers are making a documentary about the final days of the campaign. Hot Air says it best:

It also looks a little self-indulgent. Obama’s clearing room on the plane for — what? Documentarians who will produce hagiographies about his historic importance. That fits into another pattern we’ve seen for months, one marked with fake presidential seals, The Barackopolis, and infomercials. In the coming Age of Obama, only the worshipers will get front-row seats to history.

If Obama cheats his way to victory, we might want to read more about the Gene Sharp, pictured at right.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Iowahawk, premier blogger satirist, sent me over to Tidestemmer, a worthwhile trip. In an article titled "Random Error Doesn't Look Like This," Gene Fama argues what I have noticed in over three decades of watching elections; Republicans almost always do better than the polls indicate. People forget how close the 1976 election turned out to be, 50.1% to 48.0%. That was an incredible result given the albatross of Watergate, the Nixon pardon, "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" statement, and the MSM portrayal of Ford as a bumbler. (Hey, is there some sort of theme here?)

Look at this graphic on exit polling discrepancies from 2004 and you will notice the consistent anti-Republican bias in result. Why? (It is not that Republicans cheated in every state.) My theory is that pollsters for the MSM are more comfortable polling in locations where there are like minded people and they somehow are self selecting fellow liberals to do exit polling to a small but measurable degree. This is basic to anyone who has studied the need for double blind testing in psychology, the area of science most closely linked to polling.

Gene also discusses the so-called Bradley effect, but turns it on its head. Perhaps, in an atmosphere supercharged by the constant playing of the race card, people who disagree with Obama on the issues, but who don't want to be called racist are saying they will vote for him as well. Because Obama did not seem to have a Bradley effect going in the primaries (he closed well), I tend to buy Gene's explanation. In the primaries, the Democrats all agreed with one and other on the policy issues, hence no effect.

To re-iterate my point from yesterday, just more reason to keep voting and get your fellow freedom-lovers to vote as well.

Abortion: Not only his extremism, but his lying in defense of extremism are detailed.

Taxes: Despite his statements that 95% of Americans will not pay more in taxes, we know that his programs will cost and short of confiscatory tax rates, this won't get the kind of cash needed by Obama's socialist plans for health care. Incredibly, Obama has said he wants to raise capital gains taxes, even if it results in less income for the feds. Why, "It's the fair thing to do."

Radicalism: (Read socialism) Obama's political upbringing has been with the most radical elements of the American left as symbolized by Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.

Foreign Policy Judgment: Yes, he was against the Iraq war, when he was a state senator from a liberal district, so what. How about, he voted against the surge, which is giving us the scope to start withdrawing with victory. How about meeting Ahmadinejad without preconditions, which he keeps trying to spin as "we should be talking." (A reminder, we are talking to Iran. The question is, should the President of the United States legitimize that fascist fool by meeting without preconditions.) Also, his initial reaction to the Russian invasion of Georgia was mealy-mouthed, compared to McCain's immediate condemnation.

Liberal disdain for the Heartland (I like to call it Marxism): Us gun-toting, bible thumping, anti-illegal immigrant rednecks cling to these beliefs out of despair of improving our lives. This is classic Marxist dialectic, arguing that those who don't agree with you are victims of "false consciousness." I'm surprised that the underlying Marxist premise of Obama's remarks doesn't get more play, because it indicates the depth to which he has internalized an Marxist academic thought. (My apologies to any liberals who wondered in here by mistake, for causing the cognitive dissonance of seeing conservatives using big words and understanding your academic overreaching.)

Lack of Accomplishments: Nothing more to say.

We must not be discouraged, every vote counts, not necessarily in determining the outcome, but in shaping the debate. I am not conceding the election, more about why the race is probably tight, tomorrow. But, even if Obama cheats his way to victory or wins outright, it is important that the voices of those who believe in freedom of speech, freedom of markets, limited government, and anti-socialism be heard. This has been a terrible year, capping off a terrible eight years, because we have been betrayed by the party we thought most wedded to the cause of liberty. The sooner we move the country back towards a freedom agenda the better off we will all be. So I urge you to vote, even if you live in the bluest of blue states, to let others know that there are millions ready to fight socialism in America.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Jason Grumet, Obama policy advisor on the environment, has a plan to wreck the United States economy. He plans to outlaw the element represented at left. From the WSJ:

In an interview last week with Bloomberg, Mr. Grumet said that come January the Environmental Protection Agency "would initiate those rulemakings" that classify carbon as a dangerous pollutant under current clean air laws. That move would impose new regulation and taxes across the entire economy, something that is usually the purview of Congress. Mr. Grumet warned that "in the absence of Congressional action" 18 months after Mr. Obama's inauguration, the EPA would move ahead with its own unilateral carbon crackdown anyway.

Such an action would clearly be extra-constitutional, because the proposed method of imposing taxes to reduce carbon emissions are the purview of the Congress. Further, the EPA is not supposed to be politicized, but here is Team Barry, ready to seize control of the machinery of state to impose socialism. Amazingly, this plan assumes that Obama won't be able to convince a democrat Congress to do his bidding on global warming. Admittedly, this was not Obama, but an advisor talking, but the stench of state planning and redistribution permeates his campaign.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Peter J. Wallison, of the WSJ, brings to light a couple of important points on the current financial mess. First, contrary to Obama's claims (he's wrong again) this crisis did not happen because of deregulation:

While there has been significant deregulation in the U.S. economy during the last 30 years, none of it has occurred in the financial sector.

Second, Obama himself bears complicity. By his own account, Obama wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury that the subprime loan situation was dangerous. Here is what happenned next:

In the summer of 2005, a bill emerged from the Senate Banking Committee that considerably tightened regulations on Fannie and Freddie, including controls over their capital and their ability to hold portfolios of mortgages or mortgage-backed securities. All the Republicans voted for the bill in committee; all the Democrats voted against it. To get the bill to a vote in the Senate, a few Democratic votes were necessary to limit debate.

However, Obama was unwilling to confront his own party on this issue, an issue in which he claims to have had "special" knowledge that a crisis was in the offing. This is the most revealing example of political cowardice I can imagine. The job description of Senator is to vote on legislation. Legislation was offered that might have mitigated the current crisis. Obama claims he knew a crisis was brewing. He did nothing. Great leadership.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Sorry for the hiatus from blogging. Watching Republicans and Democrats team up to socialize a large portion of the economy put me into a dark place.

Over at BwD, Dean has a post debating whether the use of the N word (settle down, that's the Nazi word, not the other N word) is an appropriate reference when describing Obama's imagery and followers. I respectfully decline to use the Nazi term, but believe the more general term fascism is applicable. Here is a reasonable definition from the wikipedia article:

A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

The cult of personality often looms large in fascistic culture and iconography. Remember Michelle Obama telling us that her husband won't let us go back to our old apathetic ways. This is classic cult fascism, seeking to dominate the mindspace of the citizenry.

Obama supporters who found the campuses congenial and Mr. Obama himself, who has chosen to live all his adult life in university communities, seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech they don't like and seem utterly oblivious to claims this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.

The whole article is an excellent summary of Obama's followers' antipathy to free speech. From truth squads threatening jail in Missouri to flooding Chicago radio stations to prevent anti-Obama facts from being presented to attempts to reimpose the "fairness doctrine" Obama and his followers seem uncomfortable with dissent.

Meanwhile over at Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga is calling for a complete crushing of the conservative movement in America. I've heard conservatives call for victory, but stamping out liberalism? Even Rush never says that. Sounds a little fascist too me, how about you?

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

I watched most of the second debate tonight, and I was struck by how mundane and tired the whole felt like. I was glad to see McCain call out Obama on a number of issues, but their lack of substantive differences on the bail out took the a lot of the drama out of it.

And it was plenty of the same old-same old from Obama. When asked why either party should be trusted with our money, Obama replies in part, because I am going to spend it better. From the transcript:

So here's what I would do. I'm going to spend some money on the key issues that we've got to work on.

It's that old time liberalism, by gum, we've got to spend more of your tax dollars to save ya from yourselves.

Obama called this the worst economic crises since the Great Depression. On what basis? Unemployment, although a lagging indicator, is just over 6%. The stock market is way down along with home prices, but that does not measure the health of the economy. Of course, he starts out by blaming Bush and deregulation. (Where does this come from? I cannot remember any deregulation initiatives during this administration. As a matter of fact a big new regulation, Sarbanes-Oxley was passed. The addition of financial regulations was one of the things that irked me about this administration.) To be fair I quote Obama at length:

And I'll tell you what, the Treasury should demand that money back [$400,000 junket] and those executives should be fired. But that's only step one. The middle-class need a rescue package. And that means tax cuts for the middle-class.

It means help for homeowners so that they can stay in their homes. It means that we are helping state and local governments set up road projects and bridge projects that keep people in their jobs.

And then long-term we've got to fix our health care system, we've got to fix our energy system that is putting such an enormous burden on families. You need somebody working for you and you've got to have somebody in Washington who is thinking about the middle class and not just those who can afford to hire lobbyists.

Notice how no crisis, great or small, doesn't morph into a call for greater government spending hither and yon on everything that might buy some votes, while unrelated to the "greatest fiscal crisis since the Great Depression." BTW, government spending did not end that crisis either.

I think on health care, the differences were most striking. Obama proposes to set up a new bureaucracy to insure those without insurance, and McCain proposes to hand out checks to let people shop around. I don't like either plan, but more health care bureaucracy isn't going to get it done. Also, Obama says, no one will be turned away for a pre-existing condition. This is madness. This will just encourage businesses to tighten up their eligibility rules to remove high risk workers from the rolls. This is where Obama's unspecified fines come in. It just has the stench of fascism.

McCain used one of his responses to bait Obama into asking the moderator to change the rules so that he could respond to McCain's final attack. That looked pretty weak, Brokaw pointed out that both sides had agreed to the format. But when the outcome wasn't to his liking, Obama whined. Brokaw got him off the hook by pointing out that since the next question was sort of related he could use that answer for rebuttal. But again, it shows a guy who does not think well on his feet. In debates such as these, both sides often ignore the question so Obama's protest made him look petulant. Judge for yourself. [After McCain nails him on his tax plans, you realize how effective that was by Obama's response.]

Brokaw: Sen. Obama, we have another question from the Internet.

Obama: Tom, can I respond to this briefly? Because...

Brokaw: Well, look, guys, the rules were established by the two campaigns, we worked very hard on this. This will address, I think, the next question.

Obama: The tax issue, because I think it's very important. Go ahead.

Brokaw: There are lots of issues that we are going to be dealing with here tonight. And we have a question from Langdon (ph) in Ballston Spa, New York, and that's about huge unfunded obligations for Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlement programs that will soon eat up all of the revenue that's in place and then go into a deficit position.

Since the rules are pretty loose here, I'm going to add my own to this one. Instead of having a discussion, let me ask you as a coda to that. Would you give Congress a date certain to reform Social Security and Medicare within two years after you take office? Because in a bipartisan way, everyone agrees, that's a big ticking time bomb that will eat us up maybe even more than the mortgage crisis.

And Barry doesn't even thank him for the assist. Actually, I thought Brokaw was pretty fair over all, but I welcome your thoughts on that matter.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Apparently, the RNC has been reading the blogs. Story here in the Washington Post that a lawyer for the RNC will be filing a complaint with the FEC that Team Barry hasn't been weeding out suspicious donations, including possibly illegal foreign ones. Newseek has picked up on Mr. Good Will in an article titled, "Good Will Hunting." Very clever title indeed. And even Reuters has picked up the story, although in typical liberal context, their headline adds, "GOP says." But hey, at least this is getting some play.

I think that Obama is ethically challenged. His campaign never responds fully to inquiries when a half-truth or obfuscation will do. (Small example, when asked about articles he might have authored for the Harvard Law Review, Team Barry responded that as editor, Obama did not author columns. Turns out he had indeed written for the Review, before he became editor. Why the obfuscation?) It is not surprising that this has happenned.

My bold prediction, Team Barry will find one or two of McCain's donations that are suspect (unlike the thousands of Obama's that are suspect) and declare some sort of moral equivalence.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

I first read about Barack Obama in June 2005 in an article by Peggy Noonan. I think I missed his 2004 Democratic convention speech. Obama, then a first term senator with all of a year and a half in office, compared himself to Abraham Linclon as follows:

This week comes the previously careful Sen. Barack Obama, flapping his wings in Time magazine and explaining that he's a lot like Abraham Lincoln, only sort of better. "In Lincoln's rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat--in all this he reminded me not just of my own struggles."

As Sarah Palin pointed out, Senator Obama has had time to write two memoirs but no major piece of legislation. But he clearly believes he is The One, comparing himself to Lincoln being only the most egregious examples. Were he not in politics he might be diagnosed with a disorder.

Yet, he proposes to lead our nation despite lacking any significant accomplishments. How can this be? Over at American Thinker, Bookworm theorizes that a goodly portion of the electorate is acting like the classic abused woman, who theorizes that her boyfriend will shape up once he is married. He makes all the promises, even one's she knows he can't keep. (I won't raise your taxes, but you will receive free health care. We will stop greenhouse gas emissions but not the economy.) And he tells her that he loves her. After all the trauma she's been through, the sordid Clinton scandals, 2000 election debacle, 9/11, the government's clumsy domestic response and now the S&L debacle, (did I really say that? I was thinking the current Fannie Mae and credit mess), she just desperately wants to BELIEVE. But as Bookworm points out:

Just as marriage to the bad boy won't magically make him better, a presidential inauguration won't transform the anti-American, unaccomplished Barack Obama into an effective statesman imbued with a true love for his country.

So I hope the electorate gets some cold feet soon, because too much is at stake. The best antidote for the last sixteen years would be competent leadership dedicated to real reform in our government. With Barack Obama expect the same old liberalism dressed up in new clothing, but inevitably growing government which will make it even less effective and accountable.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Were you amazed by that amazing fund raising machine from all those small donors? Maybe less so when the donors are like Mr. Good Will of Austin, TX who lists his employer as "Loving" and his occupation as "You." Mr. Good Will has given an amazing $17,375 to Team Barry, all in under $25 donations. Now why would a fine upstanding citizen like Mr. Will do that? Turns out that the names of donors giving less than $200 do not have to be reported. (Although John McCain's camp voluntarily does so.) There are legal maximums that people can donate to a campaign, but before we accuse Obama of accepting illegal campaign contributions, I should point out that there may be dozens of Mr. Good Wills living in Austin, so this could all be on the up and up. Ken Timmerman at Newsmax has more:

Unlike the McCain campaign, which has made its complete donor database available online, the Obama campaign has not identified donors for nearly half the amount he has raised, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).

Federal law does not require the campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200 during the election cycle. However, it does require that campaigns calculate running totals for each donor and report them once they go beyond the $200 mark.

Surprisingly, the great majority of Obama donors never break the $200 threshold.

Another tidbit, the screen shot above is an older version of Obama's web site where Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was invited to break U.S. campaign finance law and donate to the campaign. According to Andrew McCarthy at NRO:

The would-be President of the World is raising goo-gobs of money from foreigners outside the United States (a violation of federal law), and matching goo-gobs of money inside the United States from phantoms who are blowing out the individual contribution limits by, among other devices, making up identies and breaking up contributions in amounts less than $200, for which reporting requirements are less rigorous.

Of course, the MSM is so in the tank for Obama that none of this will get an airing from them. I look forward to seeing the independent prosecutor revived to investigate all this after the Republicans regain the House and Senate in 2010.